Writing for Bloggers 101: Writing Great Content and Avoiding Blogger Burnout

I am thrilled to offer this post from guest blogger, Peter Stern. You can see why he has my great respect. I'd love to make this required reading for every blogger.

Ah, the wonders of the Internet… It’s given us chat rooms, blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and “Hot or Not” bulletin boards. All “new media” in which anyone can say anything to anybody without having to bother with editors or publishers. But “old media” star Dave Barry had a point when he described cyberspace as a place where you can go to connect to all kinds of people all over the world, “many of whom are boring and stupid.”

Sorry. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, but with 173,000 new blogs being launched every day, not all of them can be brilliant and insightful. So, as a blogger, how do you keep yours from falling into Dave Barry’s characterization of the many?

Well, if you are a regular reader of THIS particular blog, the chances that you are a stupid boring person are pretty low. So you’ve got that going for you.

But even Laura recently “confessed” to being somewhat burned-out on this blog. No wonder. She had fallen into one of the most common traps that can swallow-up a writer. She was trying to write for a “general audience.” The truth is there is no such thing as a “general audience” and trying to appeal to a lowest common denominator can suck the life out of any writing – or any writer.

Writing is hard work under the best of circumstances. Writing stuff you don’t care about to people you don’t know can become an intolerable burden.

I imagine that Laura is hardly the only one to feel this way, what with blogging gurus hectoring about getting the numbers up and suggesting a kaleidoscope of tips and tricks to accomplish that. To be fair to the gurus, almost all of them acknowledge that the number one requirement for a successful blog is

“quality content,” but few will offer to tell you what that is, much less how to produce it. (Notice I didn’t say NONE of the gurus.Steve Pavlina, while not usually my favorite character, has a lot to say about this. Then they go on to talk about search engine optimization, page rank, social bookmarking, tagging and contextual advertising.

I’m not qualified to give advice on any of that stuff, but I can talk about content. And I’m going to start by talking about painting my living room. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that the ratio of time spent in prep work – scraping, sanding, taping, etc. – to actual painting is about two hours to 20 minutes. It’s terribly unglamorous, but you have to do it and do it right if you want to be proud of the finished product.

It’s the same with writing a blog. The most important work you do as a blogger takes place in your head long before you ever sit at a keyboard and start building words into sentences. It’s all about the attitude.

Seriously. The mindset with which you go into the enterprise will determine the look of the finished product as well as your level of satisfaction with the whole experience.

The blogging gurus can give you all the good reasons to blog, and you probably know them already, so I’m going to give you some BAD reasons to blog. . .

“Because everyone else is doing it. . .”

This is probably the worst. It’s the most painful and can do the most damage. If you’re blogging goal is to fill up a certain amount of space on a regular schedule because someone is telling you that’s what you MUST do to sell your product or service, it will quickly become the most onerous chore on your to-do list. What’s worse, it’s almost certain to backfire. Content produced just to fill up space at certain intervals – non-content content, I call it – is far more likely to drive away potential customers/clients than attract them. The surest way to prove that you have nothing worthwhile to say is by saying nothing worthwhile with great frequency.

“Because I want to make a living as a professional blogger. . .”

And when I was eight years old, I wanted to play second base for the New York Yankees. So did a gazillion other kids. Every professional musician wants to play Carnegie Hall – and you know how to get there: “Practice, baby, practice.”

Certainly it’s possible to succeed against long odds. Since I was eight, a couple of dozen out of those gazillion kids actually did get to play second base for the Yankees. Every one of them (with the possible exception of the less-than-mediocre Horace Clarke) knew exactly what footwork was needed to turn a double play.

The point is that there are basics to be mastered and a lot of dues to pay. As unpopular as it might be in this age of instant gratification, the money comes later, if at all.

Many try; few succeed. Is that any reason not to try? Not at all. I played youth baseball until I was simply not good enough to keep up with the competition. And when I hung up my spikes I was satisfied knowing that I’d gone as far as I could go.

“Because I want to express myself. . .”

That’s nice. Self-expression is good. But most people who start with this as their reason for blogging are really writing for an audience of one. And that leads to a variation on the old question about the tree falling in the forest: If you’re blogging and nobody cares, are you really saying anything?

If you want people to care, you must put the reader, not yourself, at the center of the enterprise. It may be your blog and you’re responsible for its content but it’s really not about you. To be blunt, its only reason for being – and your only reason for being a writer – is to serve your readers.

If “service” sounds a bit too humble and boring for your style, remember this: A “how to” article is a service. Teaching people “why” is a service. Entertainment is a service. Letting people know that they are not alone is a service. Making people laugh is a service. Sometimes making them cry is, too.

Whoever does this best wins the blogging game. Do it well enough and you might even make some money.

To my way of thinking, there is only ONE good reason to blog, or to write anything, for that matter. It’s this:

“I have something important to say, I know people who need to hear it, and this is the best way to communicate with them.”

All else flows from that. No matter how many “friends” you gather on a MySpace page; no matter how many times your blog is tagged, if you waste your readers’ time, they will go away and not come back.

By now, some of you may be thinking that I’m some kind of head-in-the-clouds purist and asking…

“Doesn’t everybody like money? Doesn’t everybody want to be successful?” Of course they do.

“Is there anything wrong with promoting my blog?” Absolutely not.

But practitioners of the new media can take a lesson from the old media, which actually learned a thing or two over a few hundred years.

In almost every newspaper office, there is a wall between the advertising department and the newsroom. Often, it is a literal, physical wall. At my college newspaper it was a symbolic wooden railing surrounding a bullpen of editorial desks.

The reason the wall is there, in part, is because the person in charge of both functions – the publisher – knows that the advertising sales people will not be able to sell an inferior product, and that content overly influenced by “what sells” will inevitably degrade the product.

As a blogger, you are in the strange position of wearing all three hats – publisher, marketer and writer. You have to perform the duties of each, but they still remain separate functions. And it’s best that they stay that way.

If you are looking for editorial assistance for a writing project (including traditional print), you can find out more about Peter's services here.

Wellspring Coaching

Stumble It

Comments

[Kristie]

Thanks Peter for your words of wisdom. I've been reading your posts Laura, just been a little quiet myself - those stillwaters came a calling!

[Kim]

Wow!!! I've been blogging for two years and this is a great post! I'm going to link to it in my next post - this needs to get out to as many bloggers as possible. : )
I went through a writers block myself this summmer, luckily I came out of it but it was really rough. I thought I had run out of ideas. When I stopped being so concerned with WHAT I wrote and just WROTE, I snapped right out of it!

[#1 Dinosaur]

Great post; nothing to disagree with.

I've actually addressed this same topic, albeit at a more nuts-and-bolts level here:

http://dinosaurmusings.blogspot.com/2006/11/blogging-101.html

[Beth]

Great post, and very timely. I've been having an existential crisis with respect to blogging lately and I'm not sure where it's going.

[cmanlong]

This post has been selected as one of my Profitable Productive Posts for Wednesday, August 29. This was a great post that I stumbled across earlier this week and thought my readers would appreciate the aricle and this blog. I always like to include some articles from "new to me" blogs. Feel free to stop by my blog and check out the article and the other posts selected. I also have a small banner/badge you could use showing your selection as a profitable productive post.

later all and have a profitable productive blogging day

[Rahul Bhambhani]

Great post, and great information. I like the idea of tailoring content towards a specific audience, and not the general public.

Thanks for this,

Rahul

[Laura Young]

Thanks all, I agree, Peter did a great job with this. He's a great resource for anyone needing an editor's eye.